Tim DeChristopher is released from jail
climate justice activist Tim DeChristopher was released last month after 21 months in federal custody. DeChristopher was convicted of interfering with a public auction in 2008 when he disrupted the Bush administrations last-minute move to auction off oil and gas exploitation rights in Utah by posing as a bidder.
“theres been really two progressive approaches to electoral politics over the past generation, and thats either voting for the lesser of two evils or not voting. Like, both of those strategies have been pursued pretty seriously, and theyve both been disasters. One of the weaknesses for the climate movement,” DeChristopher explains, is that “we still have this huge divide between the political side of the movement that focuses on Washington and the grassroots side of the movement thats been building real power.”
Child labour at Fukushima
Tokyo Electric Power Co. said Tuesday it has found that a 17-year-old boy worked at its crippled Fukushima No. 1 power complex shortly after the meltdown crisis started last spring, a violation of the Labor Standards Law, which prohibits people under age 18 from working in hazardous environments. The boy apparently falsified his birthdate on a copy of the basic resident registry he submitted, claiming he was 18-years-old when hired by a subcontractor of general contractor Kajima Corp. Between April 6 and April 11, 2011, he joined work to drill holes in the walls of the reactor 2 and 4 buildings and pass through hoses, among other duties. The utility said the boy, whose internal and external radiation doses totaled 1.92 millisieverts, suffered no ill health effects. It discovered the birthdate on the boy’s radiation notebook differed from the information he previously submitted. The find was made Monday as the utility was removing the boy’s name from its registered workers’ list.
Feed-in tariffs in UK
When the UK government introduced feed-in tariffs for renewable energy it launched a massive surge in solar installations. the subsidies to large-scale producers were cut. Then a heated legal battle ensued over the future of subsidies to individual households. Now the dust is settling, government cuts have finally kicked in, and everyone is waiting to see what happens to solar installations.
[This is ridiculous thing. Mature technologies like Oil, Coal, Nuclear get enormous subsidy, where as infant technologies like solar struggling to survive]
Oil Spill
The Baton Rouge refinery, the nation’s third largest, is one of five refineries supplied by the 160,000 bpd North Line pipeline, which was shut late Saturday by a 1,900-barrel leak near Torbert, Louisiana. No date has been given for the restart of the North Line pipeline, but Exxon said it expects to restart the South Line portion of the HLS pipeline, which moves heavy Louisiana sweet crude to Baton Rouge and other locations this week.
[why we still using this poison. Try to reduce your oil use. Use electric vehicles and public transport as much as possible.]